Thomas Lux Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

Language is what we have, the only thing we have — the only thing we have, really, to communicate to each other with.

Thomas Lux
Most of my humor is satire. 'It's difficult not to write satire', said Juvenal, in one of his "Satires" written a few thousand years ago. If anything, it is even more difficult not to write satire now. Look at the world.

Thomas Lux
People should write whatever the hell they want, however they want. All kinds of poetry. Room for all kinds. What's good will stick around for a while, what's not will dry up and blow away.

Thomas Lux
I love surrealism's irreverence, wildness, explosiveness of imagination, but I dislike its insistence on chance and the arbitrary. Sometimes there are lucky accidents though I think they're more likely to happen if one has sweat a little blood.

Thomas Lux
Poetry exists because there is no other way to say the things that get said in good poems except in poems. There is something about the right combination of metaphor or image connected to the business of being alive that only poems can do. To me, it makes me feel more alive, reading good poetry.

Thomas Lux
It's a craft, an art form. "And for me, at least, to do it well is very hard work. The whole point is, you break your behind to make it look simple. Everyone knows that a dancer works for 15 years to jump up and down like a gazelle once on a stage. For me, to make a poem seem that way too, I have to sweat blood.

Thomas Lux
One writes poems never expecting anything (particularly money) back for that effort. When one does get something back, it is a great gift — a blessing.

Thomas Lux
This is not something one chooses to do... It is something I was drawn to. I do it because I love to do it, and because I don't have any choice. If I don't write, I feel empty and lost.

Thomas Lux
I used to refer to myself as a recovering surrealist. Now, if someone asked me to label myself, I'd say: imaginative realist.

Thomas Lux
I like to make the reader laugh — and then steal that laugh, right out of the throat. Because I think life is like that, tragedy right alongside humor.

Thomas Lux